It is known to be able to remotely control the lights in a room based on an input from a mobile user terminal such as a smartphone, tablet or laptop computer installed with a suitable lighting control application. The mobile terminal comprises a wireless transceiver capable of communicating with a transceiver of the lighting system, typically operating based on a short-range RF technology such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. The application running on the mobile terminal is thereby able to send a request to a controller of the lighting system, and assuming the mobile terminal or user meets any conditions for being allowed to control the lighting (if any) then the controller generates a corresponding lighting control command to control the lighting accordingly. For example the user is typically provided the option of switching the lights on or off, or dimming the lights up or down.
It is also known that the particular light sources the user can control from his or her terminal may be limited based on location. The location of the mobile terminal can be determined relative to a plurality of reference nodes having known locations, e.g. the anchor nodes of an indoor location system. This is achieved by measuring properties of signals transmitted between the mobile terminal and reference nodes, and inferring the location from which the combination of those properties must have been experienced or would have most likely been experienced; e.g. by measuring signal properties such as time of flight and/or signal strength relative to the reference nodes and performing a calculation such as trilateration or multilateration to infer the mobile terminal's location. Combining this calculation with the known location of the reference nodes (e.g. determined from a location database), it is thus possible to determine the location of the mobile terminal in more absolute terms, e.g. relative to a floor plan, map, globe or other reference framework. The lighting system can then use such information to determine which light source or sources the user is allowed to control from his or her current location.
In one example, the user is only allowed to control the lights in the same room or corridor within which his or her terminal is detected to be located, but not the lights in other rooms or corridors operated under that same system (e.g. in the same building). So for instance the user can only use the mobile terminal to switch on and off or dim those of the system's light sources in the same room as the detected location; but others of the lights sources in that system are not affected by any user input the user enters through the mobile terminal.
In another example, only those lights within a certain range of the detected location can be controlled. Thus the lights are controlled in an approximate circle or ring around the user. In another implementation, the lights are turned on in a brightness distribution around the user such that the brightness of the different light sources decreases with their distance from the detected location.